Tamil Nadu shows the way to rebuild agriculture

Source: web 

The maiden agriculture budget by Tamil Nadu has brought a whiff of fresh air in policy planning. Not only dedicating the budget to the farmers protesting against the three central laws, what makes Tamil Nadu’s farm budget so special is how the Minister for Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare MRK Pannerselvam has managed to open a new chapter by bringing back the focus on revitalising agriculture. 

Tamil Nadu it seems has confided more on economist F E Schumacher concept of Small is Beautiful– emphasising on small and appropriate technologies as well as approaches, and invested on conservation and building up of the natural resource base.  

Coming at a time when Tamil Nadu tops the national chart in farm indebtedness, in fact three of the top five indebted states hail from the southern region, the integrated approach the separate budget has laid out to rebuild farm livelihoods and to also attract youth in farming, is a pathway which in reality challenges the dominant economic thinking of moving people out of agriculture in the name of economic growth. While mainline economists celebrate this in the name of growth, in my understanding speedy urbanisation actually is a reflection of the neglect and apathy agriculture has suffered over the decades. 

According to the 2011 Census, more people in Tamil Nadu have moved out of rural to urban areas than in any other state. This is a trend that needs to be reversed. In fact, the massive reverse migration the country witnessed when tens of millions of daily wage workers walked back hundreds of kilometres to their villages after Lockdown 1.0 was imposed shows the dire need to reverse the flawed economic thinking that has pushed people from the rural areas in the first instance. Keeping agriculture deliberately impoverished all these years was the easiest way to do so. No wonder, as per Economic Survey 2016, the average farm income in 17 states of India, which means roughly half the country, hovered around Rs 20,000 a year. With such meagre annual incomes, farmers are left with little choice but to migrate. 

Not only showing an intent to reverse this faulty economic design, Tamil Nadu also demonstrate an inclination to do so. Attaining village self-sufficiency in the next five years, for which a project called ‘Kalaignar’s Anaithu Grama Oruginaintha Velan Valarchi Thittam’ has been launched, is a step in the right direction. Although only 2,500 village panchayats will be covered in the first phase, the aim is to cover the entire 12, 524 village panchayats before the state goes to polls again. An allocation of Rs 250-crore has been made for it. This may seem to be insufficient but when seen with the outlays marked for various other related schemes and programmes like village pond restoration, enhance soil fertility, greening of 11.75 lakh hectares of fallow lands in the next ten years, setting up drying yards, encouraging terrace vegetable gardens, to link millets, pulses, and oilseeds cultivation with PDS supplies, setting up farmer markets and providing for agri-processing and value addition, and a horde of other initiatives shows how keen Tamil Nadu is to change the face of its rural landscape. 

What seems fascinating (and at the same time challenging) is the policy thrust to revive the rural economy, with emphasis on farmer-centric approaches. This became possible after senior officials had gone in for an elaborate and widespread consultative process, involving all kinds of stakeholders, which brought innovative ideas as well as measures that were essential to revive farming. Instead of talking only to economists and business leaders in pre-budget exercises, Tamil Nadu reached out to farmers, activists and civil society organisations. This exercise will only remain useful if the stakeholders continue to keep a tab, ensuring that the government focus does not deviate in the years to come. 

Perhaps it is primarily for this elaborate consultative process, Tamil Nadu has made allocations for setting up a Nammalvar Organic Farming Research Centre at the TN Agricultural University, and also launched a programme to conserve traditional paddy varieties, naming it after Nel Jayaraman. In addition, a separate wing for organic farming is proposed to be created under the state agricultural department. A provision for subsidy support for organic farmers has also been made. 

Turning farming into a profitable enterprise is certainly not possible till suitable policies are laid out to retain and attract youth in farming. Although Tamil Nadu has announced a ‘Rural Youth Agricultural Skill Development Mission’ with the aim to provide the right kind of skills to the youth, and also launched programmes for capacity-building for students passing out from the agriculture university, assured income by way of an assured price remains the hallmark for converting agriculture into an economic activity. The Centre has a bigger role here, first by providing the right prices, and also must collaborate with states to bring the youth back into agriculture. It’s time to know that even in the US, the number of young in agriculture has gone up by 11 per cent between 2017 and 2019. China is planning to send 10 million youth back to the villages by 2022. 

At a time when the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2019-20 estimates that 44 per cent of the country’s workforce is engaged in agriculture, and considering that the size of the farm workforce has expanded in the post-Lockdown period, policy makers need to accept that it is no longer advisable to continue with the outdated economic thinking of keeping rural wages low so as to encourage out migration. This has to change if the country is to realise the Prime Minister’s vision of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas. Let us not forget, agriculture alone has the potential to provide gainful employment to a large section of the population. 

Tamil Nadu has shown the way. While a lot will depend on how the budget proposals are implemented, it has certainly laid out a roadmap for bringing back the focus on an economically-viable and sustainable small-scale agriculture. #

Source: Reviving Indian agriculture is a key to jump-start the economy. Bizz Buzz, Hyderabad. Aug 27, 2021. https://epaper.bizzbuzz.news/Home/ShareArticle?OrgId=278ad7b4de2&imageview=1&fbclid=IwAR0IKlTiglJSjyx5sqVxj6KJPfO8-kCATCZvHUt2hT4cpD4NS92s2aDgaV8

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Reverse Migration: Why the Long March Home?

The avalanche of migrant workers trying to get out of Delhi 

“It was poverty that forced me to leave my village, and here I am  ... I still have no money,” said Sanjay Choudhary, a construction worker in Nagpur, after he undertook an arduous journey to return back to his native village in Garhwa district in Jharkhand, covering a distance of 400 km. As millions of migrant workers tread home, with small children in tow, walking for hundreds of kms and that too for days together, the story is the same.

The avalanche of migrant workers on a long march home is perhaps the biggest human migration on foot after Independence. As if hit with a sledge hammer – fearing an immediate loss of daily wages, and with employers telling them to vacate the shelters -- millions of migrants’ defied lockdown to head back home. Not only from the major metropolis cities, the reverse migration from across the country has been unprecedented. These hungry and weary millions had first rushed to train and bus stations when the ‘Janata Curfew’ was announced, and when the lockdown was imposed, they were left with little choice but to walk back.

“We know the virus is spreading but we’ll die of starvation if we stay,” echoed a majority of the migrant workers who media talked to. While the TV screens remained filled with images of hungry and exhausted workers walking back, with heart-wrenching stories of how children were carrying the tiny tod on their shoulders, how a 90-year-old woman was walking back and so on, the fact remains that the common thread that ran through the human suffering was how acutely poverty-stricken they were. Everyone walking back had the same distressing tale – they had no money, no work, and no idea how to feed their families. Even those who stayed back are no better. They have been provided with free ration, and charity organisations along with the district administrations are making an effort to provide them cooked food to stay put.   

For the millions of migrant workers life in the urban ghettos in and around industrial and manufacturing units actually hangs by a slender thread. A few days of curfew or a lockdown, the thread is snapped. Living and surviving on daily wages, barely enough to sustain their families, they continue to slog along. “In usually earn around Rs 300 a day picking up bottles, cartons and selling them,” Abdul Halim had told a newspaper.  “What we earn varies from day to day, and from person to person. Ragpickers at best make Rs 300 a day, and a handful of drivers earn better, around Rs 500,” said another ragpicker. Whether they work on a dhaba or a restaurant or work in a small scale industry, the story is almost the same.  

Let’s be very clear. If the underlying objective of economic reforms is to push people, over the past few decades, from the rural areas to the urban centres for the country to attain a higher economic growth, migrant workers are the unsaid victims of development. They have been pushed out of the rural areas, with a majority abandoning farming, aspiring to make a better living. This is what the mainline economists had told us. For instance, a distinguished economist had once said that the big ticket reforms would be when we are able to move farmers out of agriculture to the cities because these cities need cheaper labour or dehari mazdoor. He is not the only mainline economist to have said so, several others – including business and management schools -- have been relentlessly propagating this narrative seeking appropriate policies that aim at moving a large percentage of the population out of rural areas. 

The mass exodus back home has however brought the nation face to face with the stark and grim reality. If after several decades of a policy push, millions of migrant workers surviving on a daily wage have little or no cushion to sustain their livelihood even for a few days if the job is lost, it becomes crystal clear that the trickle-down theory hasn’t worked. While it may be difficult to work out the staggering number of migrant workers who walked back, but the swelling numbers is a clear indicator. Citing the 2011 Indian Census a report in IndiaSpends says that over 60 million migrant labourers work in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru. Since the reverse migration took place from almost every corner of the country, and that includes small urban centres like Panchkula in Haryana, it is important to know that the total number of “internal migrants” form nearly 37 per cent of the population, which means roughly 45.36 crore. Not that they all migrated but quite a staggering percentage of the internal migrants did brave the hardship to return back.

If at a time of an unforeseen crisis the majority of the migrant workers feel comfortable to return home, walking hundreds of kms without food and water, even though knowing that it was the prevailing poverty in villages that first drove them to cities, the lockdown provides a god sent opportunity to policy planners to rethink the flawed policy of keeping agriculture deliberately impoverished so as to keep the economic reforms viable. If agriculture could be turned economically viable, I am sure a majority of the migrant work force that walked back would not be keen to return. The small land-holdings, despite the fragmentation that is taking place, serve as an economic security for small and marginal farmers. Even if everything else doesn’t work, the small patch of land holdings would sustain the farm families.

It is therefore time to redesign the economic policies that have continuously driven people out of agriculture to join the marginal force of dehari mazdoors in the cities. Right kind of policy mix can bring back the pride in farming, and restore the dignity of farmers, enabling them to stay back in villages. Instead of pulling a rickshaw in the cities, and holed in dingy rooms packed with half a dozen more people, the villages are socially-inclusive and gives them a sense of belonging. In other words, the long march to the villages has left behind a strong lesson -- reviving agriculture is the key to reboot the economy. #

Why the long march home? Deccan Herald. Mar 31, 2020

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/comment/why-the-long-march-home-819476.html

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